Since we've been on the topic of loss here...
...I'll just take this opportunity to vent about some of the things that come along with losing a parent in the long run. Maybe some of you don't care, maybe someone will read this who experienced loss and will share something or gain from it, I don't know...
It taken me this long to even start accepting that my mother has actually passed. I don't mean cognitive acceptance, I mean a deeper seeded acceptance. That part of you that's less cerebral and more intuitive and spiritual. Now when the pain surfaces, it's in the form of sorrow.
Before that, I'd say up until just recently, I mostly felt anger. After the initial grief, about a 5 or 6 month period ensued where I did not want to open up to anyone, keeping in touch with friends and socially exerting myself seemed like more than I could bear because I felt suddenly alienated and isolated from everyone around me who's life was seemingly "normal"...mine wasn't. What happens to a person around this time of their grief is that they stop taking pleasure in things that they once did, and become bitter towards the world. Anger is the second step. I became socially withdrawn. I was afraid that I'd meet a new person and they'd ask what my parents did and then everything would get awkward, I knew that a lot of my existing friends didn't know how to respond.
I also noticed this: When you experience a great loss, you expect certain people who are seemingly close to you to offer help of any kind. Even just that extra unnecessary phone call from time to time - not necessarily to talk about the grief - just to say hi! how are you? The expectation is there that those people will at least acknowledge your loss and understand if your behavior changes. What I found, is that people do not at all do that and that some of them even had the audacity to place blame on me or demand explanations that were satisfactory to them about why my behavior changed. Why wasn't I calling as often? Was I being self absorbed? Why aren't I being a good friend? Why wasn't I realizing that I was pushing people away?
The bottom line is this: First you are shocked, then you are angry, then you are depressed, and by the time you're approaching one year of grief, it's just starting to set in and you're just starting to move on. You do not have the energy or the social awareness to maintain relationships with people around this time who are demanding some sort of explanation of your behavior, or blaming you for losing your sense of self and how that effects the friendship. I no longer exert myself towards people who have responded selfishly towards me through out the past 7 or 8 months.
For most people a mother is a source of confidence. She is someone who believed in you and told you you could become whatever you want, or that you shouldn't worry about this or that because you'd be fine. At 24, facing the world as a brand new college graduate and having that source of reassurance, advice, and esteem ripped away from you is devastating. I'm learning how to see myself and my place in the world without my mom behind me to help me through all the stuff that she had done before me.
It's true, I am a different person. In some ways good, and in some ways bad. I worry less and feel less threatened by smaller things that used to seem big to me but were in fact trivial. I'm not as outgoing and mentally/emotionally available as I used to be, for the time being. I've learned that true friends may not be people who you see every day or go out with all the time, but rather those people who you can pick up the phone and call no matter how much time has gone by and they will never judge you.
I want to believe that I'll get back to the happy go lucky, don't care if i go out alone because I'm bound to run into people I know, meeting new people all the time self. I seem normal on the outside. When I do meet new people they would never guess at anything that's hard or painful about my life, but I feel a difference. I'm not sure when I'll remember that I can't pick up the phone and call my mom. I'm not sure when I'll be satisfied that there are no answers of why this happened to her. But it's a long road...a really long one. It's teaching me patience, and I wish that people didnt have to go through something this extreme to learn patience. I don't mean momentary patience, I mean life patience.
It taken me this long to even start accepting that my mother has actually passed. I don't mean cognitive acceptance, I mean a deeper seeded acceptance. That part of you that's less cerebral and more intuitive and spiritual. Now when the pain surfaces, it's in the form of sorrow.
Before that, I'd say up until just recently, I mostly felt anger. After the initial grief, about a 5 or 6 month period ensued where I did not want to open up to anyone, keeping in touch with friends and socially exerting myself seemed like more than I could bear because I felt suddenly alienated and isolated from everyone around me who's life was seemingly "normal"...mine wasn't. What happens to a person around this time of their grief is that they stop taking pleasure in things that they once did, and become bitter towards the world. Anger is the second step. I became socially withdrawn. I was afraid that I'd meet a new person and they'd ask what my parents did and then everything would get awkward, I knew that a lot of my existing friends didn't know how to respond.
I also noticed this: When you experience a great loss, you expect certain people who are seemingly close to you to offer help of any kind. Even just that extra unnecessary phone call from time to time - not necessarily to talk about the grief - just to say hi! how are you? The expectation is there that those people will at least acknowledge your loss and understand if your behavior changes. What I found, is that people do not at all do that and that some of them even had the audacity to place blame on me or demand explanations that were satisfactory to them about why my behavior changed. Why wasn't I calling as often? Was I being self absorbed? Why aren't I being a good friend? Why wasn't I realizing that I was pushing people away?
The bottom line is this: First you are shocked, then you are angry, then you are depressed, and by the time you're approaching one year of grief, it's just starting to set in and you're just starting to move on. You do not have the energy or the social awareness to maintain relationships with people around this time who are demanding some sort of explanation of your behavior, or blaming you for losing your sense of self and how that effects the friendship. I no longer exert myself towards people who have responded selfishly towards me through out the past 7 or 8 months.
For most people a mother is a source of confidence. She is someone who believed in you and told you you could become whatever you want, or that you shouldn't worry about this or that because you'd be fine. At 24, facing the world as a brand new college graduate and having that source of reassurance, advice, and esteem ripped away from you is devastating. I'm learning how to see myself and my place in the world without my mom behind me to help me through all the stuff that she had done before me.
It's true, I am a different person. In some ways good, and in some ways bad. I worry less and feel less threatened by smaller things that used to seem big to me but were in fact trivial. I'm not as outgoing and mentally/emotionally available as I used to be, for the time being. I've learned that true friends may not be people who you see every day or go out with all the time, but rather those people who you can pick up the phone and call no matter how much time has gone by and they will never judge you.
I want to believe that I'll get back to the happy go lucky, don't care if i go out alone because I'm bound to run into people I know, meeting new people all the time self. I seem normal on the outside. When I do meet new people they would never guess at anything that's hard or painful about my life, but I feel a difference. I'm not sure when I'll remember that I can't pick up the phone and call my mom. I'm not sure when I'll be satisfied that there are no answers of why this happened to her. But it's a long road...a really long one. It's teaching me patience, and I wish that people didnt have to go through something this extreme to learn patience. I don't mean momentary patience, I mean life patience.